he-reason-of-social-corruption-through-vanity-fair---通过名利场揭示社会腐败的原因--大学毕设论文.doc

Reveal the Reason of Social Corruption through Vanity Fair

通过名利场揭示社会腐败的原因

摘要
《名利场》是19世纪著名批判现实主义家威廉·梅克皮斯·萨克雷的代表作。小说中塑造了各式各样的人物，自私和虚伪充斥整篇小说。通过分析人物，我们可以得出这样的结论：19世纪的英国社会已经腐败。本文认为社会腐败首先源于社会经济的迅速发展，巨大的财富是滋生社会腐败的物质基础。其次在于社会主流文化的导向作用，健康向上的主流社会文化能够有效抑制负面文化的滋生。第三是社会生活中人们的精神态度，这里的精神态度指的是人们对主流文化的主观能动作用，即人们是否推存社会主流文化。
关键词：萨克雷 社会腐化 主流文化

【Abstract】
Reveal the Reason of Social Corruption through Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair is the famous critical realism masterpiece of William Makepeace Thackeray in the 19th century. Thackeray created a wide variety of characters in the novel; most of the people were full of selfish and hypocrisy. By analyzing the characters, we can come to this conclusion: The reasons of the society corrupted. There are three reasons for social corruption. Firstly, rapid development of social economy, great wealth is the material basis for social corruption. The second one, the direction of mainstream culture, a healthy mainstream culture can effectively inhibit the negative culture. The last one, people’s mental state in social life, mental state here refers to people’s subjective dynamic-role to the mainstream culture, namely whether people follow the mainstream culture .
【Key Words】:
Thackeray; social corruption; mainstream culture

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................4

Chapter1 SOCIAL CORRUPTION STUDY OF VANITY FAIR THROUGH MATERIAL DEVELOPMENT AND SOCIAL MAINSTREAM CULTURE ...................................................................................................................5
1.1 The Effect of Material Development to Social Corruption....................................................................................................................5
1.2 The Effect of Social Mainstream Culture to Social Corruption....................................................................................................................5

Chapter2 SOCIAL CORRUPTIN STUDY OF VANTIY FAIR THROUGH PEOPLE’S MENTAL STATE........................................................................................................................7
2.1 The Mental States of Ruling Class..............................................................................................................................7
2.2 The Mental States of Middle Class............................................................................................................................7
2.3 The Mental States of the Lower Class............................................................................................................................8

CONCLUTION...........................................................................................................10

BIBLOGRAPHY.........................................................................................................10

Reveal the Reason of Social Corruption through Vanity Fair

INTRUDUCTION

1. The Author of Vanity Fair
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) was born at Calcutta. He was a representative of critical realism in 19th century who has the same reputation with Charles Dickens in England. He was not only a great realism writer but also a humorist. It can called he was a mastermind of humor. In his early education, an independent spirit was infused to small Thackeray, so he went his own way, attending various school and leaving Thinity college, Cambridge without taking a degree. He became an experienced writer because of the environment of he lived and studied in India and Continental Europe in his early years, and his rough destiny. There is no doubt that in his novel, he exposed several malpractice in that social and especially nobleman and darkness climber’s mask. He used his pen to disclose the darkness of society and the Vanity Fair is a vivid and satire embodiment in that time and society. As he said “The original of corrupt the human morality is the whole society’s selfish ”. Vanity Fair is Mr Thackeray’s most important work, Except Vanity Fair, he also had other famous works. Such as The History of Henry Esmond, the Full-length novels of The History of Pendennis, The Virginians, the Medium-length novels of The luck of Barry Lyndon, and the short story collections of The Book of Snobs .

2. The Plot of Vanity Fair
The title of Vanity Fair was taken from Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. It also called A Novel without a Hero. The scene of the story was the first half of the 19th century in England. The novel opens with two girls from their school on London Suburb, where they had study for 6 years. One of them was Amalia, the daughter of a wealthy London family, who didn’t esteem the values of Vanity Fair. The other was Becky, an orphan who cares of nothing else except money and position. Amalia was a virtuous and charming girl, who won the love of everybody who came near to her, so the classmates were friendly and kindly to her. As author said “Her face blushed with rosy healthy, and her lips had the freshest of the smiles”. One the contrary, Becky was so impolite that she threw out the dictionary that Miss Jemica gave her as gift. They had different background of family, disposition and social status that caused the different life. What a greed lady who’s father is a died artist, she passed all kinds of ways to get money and position, and she wanted to entry the higher society, but she didn’t know that the noise can only make herself lonely and desolated. Purely girl Amalia fallen deep in love with frivolous officer and had been abandoned. Even if they married, the officer also died in battle. The author painted a picture of Vanity Fair in reality life vividly and described the deceit, betrayal, incisively and ugly behavior.

Chapter 1 Social Corruption Study of Vanity Fair through Material Development and Social Mainstream Culture
As we all know, the economic is a country’s basic, the culture is a nationality’s soul, so country or nation’s prosperity or corruption cannot leave the economic and culture.

1.1 The Effect of Material Development to Social Corruption
After 1801, the United Kingdom won the final war with France lasting for 14 years. British Royal Navy controlled the seas. As we all know, it called maritime empire, it’s good for international trade, and due to the great development of commercial. United Kingdom began to expand the scope of the British colony, provided cheap raw materials, industrial products also provide the majority of the market, created a favorable environment for industrial development. In that time, United State also was in Industrial Revolution. With new machines helped, the United Kingdom continuously improves it’s productivity which is several times the speed of development. Industrial output of the UK was also rising in the mid-19 century, British had became the world’s most advanced country, no other country can ready to compete with her in industrial production.
At the same time, the rapid development of industrial also promote the development of the urbanization, and some large cities appeared and grown stronger and stronger, especially the large industrial cities raised rapidly and a large number of rural people swarmed into cities to get better livelihood, the United Kingdom was extremely rapid process of urbanization rural way of life is gradually fading out of sight, replaced by a new lifestyle and philosophy.
In the work we can see that the highly developed economy. It is development of economy that paves the way for British, also it provided the hotbed for the corruption of the people.
Fortunately, it appeared a person who recorded the change and development of the United Kingdom. He lived in that time, and he known a lot of about what happened in this time and this country. He through a novel to express the corruption of country. In this novel, Amelia’s father and George’s father were good friends before Amelia’s father went bankrupt. Because of the industrial revolution, they became richer and richer and forgot what is the real meaning of the real friends in their life. There are two large families in this novel, many classical allusions from popular objects reflected the historical background, laws and regulations, social customs and even the author’s artistic intention.

1.2 The Effect of Social Mainstream Culture to Social Corruption
In the work we can see that the process of industrialization, the industrial bourgeoisie and the interests of the working class from the past gradually evolved into antagonistic classes. In the Industrial Revolution, large industrial machinery gradually replaced handicraft production; workers have became the accessories of machine. Maximize profits was the object of capitalists, they do everything possible to increase working hours, increasing labor intensity with lower wage even if women, children and old people. Capitalists can not give worker the necessary safety. Poor working environment, serious health hazards threat worker’s health and personal safety.
Market competition, also caused a large number of the poor. To the late 19th century, Britain had nearly a million people unemployed. The development of capitalism came to the free heyday, bourgeoisie contempt for human rights, not to the unemployed and the poor as they think, that poverty is due to “personal laziness”, with such ideas 1834, under the impetus of the industrial bourgeoisie, the government enacted a “poor law”. This law established in the country workhouse, where no source of income, in need of social assistance is required to enter the workhouse, But the poor were still forced to do heavy manual labor with extremely poor living conditions.
This changed people’s ideal about society, people became money worship, they try their best to make money for life. Money became the only rule of judging a person.
The people in this novel all have a strong desire for money and position, the author depicted their libido for ugly things. Like Becky, she was from a poor family and her father was a artist, her mother was a whore. She wanted to get money and position to change her life in her early ages, so she is expected to hustle and fight for what she wanted. She thought that money is everything in her life, like she said: ” If I had 5000 ponds, I would be a good woman. The rawness of her greed was frank and uninhibited , led her get lonely and lonely in her end days.

Chapter2 Social Corruption Study of Vanity Fair through People’s Mental State
In the novel, author used different figures to stand for different classes, here we’ll analyze the mental state of three classes according to the figures and then reveal the corruption social.
2.1 The Mental State of Ruling Class
Representative figure:George Osborne
George Osborne is the son of businessman, we choose him as the representative figure because some of his appearance and behavior shows the mental state of the most capitalists. Like author said “He was as vain as a girl”. George Osborne, Amelia’s husband, the only son of the rich businessman. He was a handsome and childish young man, but his appearance and behavior quite different. In his opinion, his father had got enough money to piss away from now until the day he died. As a son, he was a ungrateful son. He exhausted all means to cheat money from his father, but never wanted to return to his father. In the end, he married Becky without his father’s agreement, and he broken with his father. Afterward, he had to respect for his father on the surface because the old Osborne controlled the economy lifeline of inheriting his bequest, but he failed, old Osborne let his money to his daughter. As a husband, Osborne was a liar totally, he didn’t love his wife, just wanted to possessed her. He let his wife waited him with lonely and poorly. He flirted with Becky quite seriously and is reconciled to Amelia only a short time before he killed in battle. As a unborn child’s father, he never taken his responsibility, he just wasted all hie money from his father for enjoying and playing, he didn’t considered the future of his child, and set nothing aside to help support his wife and child. As a officer, he favored the war, not for defended the country of foreign aggression, but for got a higher rank and profit. Sometimes he likes a child, didn’t know what is right and what is wrong. He never considered the consequence and things that bring harm to others. He deceived anyone, even himself, because he always thought himself like Becky. There was no doubt that he was a selfish, greed and stupid man.
To be honest, there are many people like Osborne in this novel even in today, like sister and father of Osborne, family of Crawley, Osborne is just a representative of ruling class.According to the Osborne, we can draw a conclusion that the ruling class -------capitalists got lost in their time and in their mind, all that they considered is themselves-------How to found joys, how to earned money early and how to got position. We can see the selfish, greed, ugly and lust in this class and I think they were the major reason of corruption.
2.2 The Mental State of Middle Class
Representative figure:Dobbin
Dobbin, the best friend of George Osborne. He was tall ungainly and not particularly handsome. We choose him as representative figure of middle class because of his conscience, compassion and deep feeling, but no one is perfect, in his time ,he is considered a lot and a bit strange. As a friend, he was a good friend. He helped George Osborne to marry with Amalia in order to made Amalia happy. He loved Amalia very much, like author said “he stood for a moment and looked at her, powerless and torn with pity, as a parent regards an infant in pain”. In Dobbin’s mind, Amalia is a ideal wife, so when he known that Osborne wanted to run away, he didn’t tell the truth to Amalia, and he tried his best to persuade Osborne. He thought he was protect Amalia out of harm, but he was wrong. After George Osborne died in battle, he didn’t want to play this role that her husband’s friend, he was tired. In the end of this novel, Dobbin understood his mistakes and told the real view which was bury in the bottom of his heart many years. He said “I know how deep your feelings, it is not loyalty to the memory of the past, do not think that my love is more valuable, but such a I’m feeling more generous.” Finally, Becky made the only right decision in her whole life that she exposed the negative sense of George Osborne behavior and contributed to their marriage and decided to get down the past and